Tomb Raider comic fates the shipwreck

The new Tomb Raider, from Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics, is a reboot of the classic gaming franchise.

This time, we’re starting at the beginning; the narrative of this entry will take us back to Lara’s early days, and tell the story of how she became such a hardened, skilled fighter of man and beast.

The Lara at the beginning of this game is a spirited girl, surely, but not one accustomed to surviving rough situations. She will start soft, and undergo dramatic transformations throughout the story, developing the character much more completely than any previous game in the franchise.

She also looks significantly different: Gone is the gratuitous bust and chiseled face. The new character design is more ‘regular girl’ and less ‘mysterious beauty’, presumably to make her more relatable.

The game begins with a shipwreck, which casts Lara away on an island where a myriad of dangerous people, animals, and physical obstacles await her. To survive, she’ll have to run, jump, climb, shoot, and bleed her way across a rough and hostile land with no friends, no hope of rescue.

That’s not the beginning of the whole story however, first she had to make her way onto that ship, and that story will be told in Tomb Raider: The Beginning, a graphic novel set immediately preceding, and leading into the events of the game. A hard-back edition of the novel will be given out with pre-orders of the game from certain retailers, but we have four pages of the book now to give us an idea of what the tale will be like. The pages are not in sequence, so don’t be concerned if they don’t make sense as a segment of story:

It looks like the shipwreck may not have been an accident, or some other conspiracy was going on. Lara is surrounded by confusing and shady characters on this ship. They have an agenda that Lara is not aware of, perhaps a mystery that she will be able to solve while trying to survive on the island.

It was also announced this week that the Tomb Raider game guide will come with its own pre-order bonus: a replica of Lara’s jade necklace. I’ve never understood the appeal of game guides, personally, but I know they have their adherents, and this is a pretty neat add-on for them.

Tomb Raider hits all major platforms on March 5, 2013, and can be pre-ordered over on Amazon, though you'll have to preorder from a physical retailer to get the graphic novel which will be released simultaniously. The game guide will also be available that day.